At a town hall in the Southside Community Center in Fort Worth, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, slammed the redistricting plan that would cut his district out of his hometown.
About 50 people gathered in the meeting room on Aug. 14 to hear from the Democratic congressman. Redistricting usually happens after the Census every 10 years, Veasey said.
"That was the tradition that was followed forever,鈥� he said. 鈥淣ow, it's like, 鈥楬ey, if it looks like we're going to have a tough year, we need to do some redistricting.鈥� And that is not how a functioning republic works."
, Texas Republicans redrew the state's Congressional maps to help pick up five new seats in next year鈥檚 midterm elections. That has kicked off a gerrymandering war, with California .
Under the new maps, Veasey's 33rd Congressional District will be confined to Dallas County. Tarrant County will largely be split between Republican districts that stretch out into rural areas.
Republicans have defended redistricting as a legal effort to gain a partisan advantage. Veasey doesn鈥檛 believe that, because the people being shuffled around are people of color, he said. CD 33, pre-redistricting, is majority Black and Hispanic, .
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just say, 鈥極h, no, it鈥檚 okay to discriminate against Black people, because most Black people happen to be Democrats,鈥欌�� Veasey told 四虎影院 after the town hall. 鈥淭hat's crazy that we would start making excuses like that for people to start discriminating against people. What are we going to start making excuses for next?"
The question of racial discrimination will be worked out in court. There are filed over the new Congressional maps. That鈥檚 on top of three other racial gerrymandering lawsuits pending over past redistricting efforts in Tarrant County, which experts see as
Better representation or a return to Jim Crow?
Republicans say the new map is legal, with purely partisan goals. State Rep. Carl Tepper, R-Lubbock, the new map will benefit a wide swath of Texans.
鈥淲e're not going to try to fool you. We're not going to lie to you. These are partisan maps,鈥� he said.
To Fort Worth resident Wallace Bridges, the new maps have the same impact as Jim Crow or designed to stop Black people from voting.
鈥淚 think at the end of the day, the intent is the same,鈥� he told 四虎影院, before the passage of the maps.
Bridges is an advocate for Historic Southside, a neighborhood in the 76104 zip code represented by Veasey in the old map. Bridges didn鈥檛 grow up there, but he decided to move there for a reason, he said.
鈥淚 had met so many professionals 鈥� Black professionals 鈥� who could have left out the neighborhood a hundred times over,鈥� Bridges said. 鈥淏ut yet they chose to stay because they really believed in the community. And at that time, it was a little rougher.鈥�
Veasey held his town hall in the Historic Southside. The congressman has always been responsive to the neighborhood鈥檚 needs, and losing him would be 鈥渁 slap in the face to the people in the community,鈥� Bridges said.
Chaplain Rich Stoglin welcomes redistricting. He was one of the only people who spoke in favor of the process at a raucous public hearing in Arlington, where the audience tried to shout him down.
鈥淲hen you start looking at redistricting as a whole, it鈥檚 to help this state become better," Stoglin told 四虎影院.
Stoglin is the president of the Frederick Douglass Republicans of Tarrant County, which exists to make sure there are 鈥渧iable candidates who happen to be people of color, and who are Republicans.鈥�
Mainstream media presumes the Republican Party is racist and all Republicans are white, but that鈥檚 not true, Stoglin said.
Most Republicans and Republican-leaning voters are white, but the party has diversified in recent years, . The GOP鈥檚 success in 2024 made national headlines.
"To me, the Republican Party brings hope, progress, and forward-leaning for this state to improve itself even more,鈥� Stoglin said. 鈥淣o party is going to be electing the Pope here. No party is perfect, but when you look at track records between the Democrat and the Republican Party, the Republican Party wins hands down."
Tarrant County鈥檚 shifting lines
While Texas' other major urban centers are bright blue, Tarrant County is complicated.
Republicans dominate county positions, but Joe Biden won Tarrant County in 2020 鈥� the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Lyndon B. Johnson. Tarrant voters picked Donald Trump in 2024, but
County GOP leaders have promised to , and previous controversial redistricting efforts have given Republicans the advantage.
In 2021, state legislators redrew Texas Senate District 10, splitting up the district's diverse population and stretching its boundaries into rural areas, almost all the way to Abilene,
Two racial discrimination lawsuits are pending over the Tarrant County Commissioners Court鈥檚 recent redistricting process. The court鈥檚 Republican majority voted to redraw their own precinct maps earlier this year to make Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons鈥� Precinct 2 more conservative.
The lawsuits allege that Republicans created a new conservative-leaning commissioners court seat by packing people of color into one precinct, diluting their power in others. The county has defended itself in court filings, saying the effort was 100% partisan and there鈥檚 no evidence of racial discrimination.
Federal judges in El Paso are also reviewing , accusing legislators of discriminating against minority voters.
Tarrant County Justice of the Peace Precinct 5, Sergio De Leon, has spoken against these redistricting efforts. He sees them, in part, as a backlash to the county鈥檚 , he told 四虎影院.
"They鈥檙e drowning us out, really, rural versus urban, so that there is more rural than there is urban, so our votes won't matter in the next election cycle," he said.
Racially discriminatory gerrymandering . Discrimination can look like 鈥減acking鈥� voters of color into one precinct, or 鈥渃racking鈥� their communities across districts, according to experts.
Proving racial discrimination is not easy, because voting is racially polarized, Northwestern University law professor and voting rights expert Michael Kang said. For example, most Black voters choose Democrats, and white voters tend to choose Republicans, he said.
鈥淧laces like Texas are saying, 'No, what we're really doing is we鈥檙e partisan gerrymandering. This is not racial,鈥欌�� Kang said. 鈥淏ecause they know that if it's characterized as a partisan gerrymander, as opposed to racial gerrymander, they can get away with it.鈥�
People who attended Veasey鈥檚 Southside town hall didn't see the benefit in redistricting.
Tellamecus Forsythe of Arlington said she went to learn how she can fight the redistricting efforts. When asked whether she thinks redistricting is a racist move, she said she couldn鈥檛 be 100% sure 鈥� but she does think it鈥檚 wrong.
鈥淭here's nothing that I've heard that makes sense for them to do this now, other than for the whim of someone else," she said.
四虎影院鈥檚 Caroline Love contributed to this story.
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